Heartbreak Provides A Springboard For Enjoyable Comedy in The Breaker Upperers

Everybody's gotta make money somehow. Me, I make money through working at Walgreen's and also through writing about movies on the internet. For the two lead characters of The Breaker Upperers (which is now streaming on Netflix), Jennifer (Jackie van Beek) and Mel (Madeleine Sami), they make their money through a service that sees them being hired by people to break up their failing relationships. Jennifer and Mel, who became best pals and business partners after they found they were seeing the same man, then proceed to concoct some sort of scheme to tear the two people apart and make a solid sum of money in the process. It's been a reliable business for quite some time, but now challenges have emerged threatening this set-up.


Specifically, Mel is becoming more and more friendly with their customers which has included striking up a romance with one of their newest clients named Jordan (James Rolleston), a dim-witted but good-hearted football player. That's a big no-no for Jennifer, who prides herself on being business first and putting romance in a distant last place. The two characters strife in maintaining their business is the primary source for much of the conflict of The Breaker Upperers, but its successful comedy emerges from a number of different places. One such place is the enjoyable chemistry between the two lead actors (who also directed this project), van Beek and Sami have a delightful rapport that nicely upends expectations in terms of the typical wacky/straight man routine of typical comedy movie duos.

Though Mel is certainly the more exuberant of the duo, both of them are capable of being wacky if a situation calls for it and that allows for both of the lead performers to flex their comedy muscles throughout the film instead of leaving one of them on the sidelines to react to the antics of the other. This chemistry between the two leads especially allows Madeleine Sami to flourish as a performer. Sami's got a low-key style of comic delivery that adds so much to some of the funniest moments of  The Breaker Upperers, many of which transpire with Sami maintaining her restrained yet wacky sensibilities even in the face of immense conflict.

Not even an appearance by Jordan's brash ex-girlfriend gets Sami's performance to become abruptly over-the-top, rather, her amusingly subdued style of comedy provides an amusing counterpart to the escalating comic chaos happening around her. Madeleine Sami really delivers some top-notch work in her lead performance that sees's her interacting with a similarly strong leading turn from Jackie van Beek. van Beek (who looks like the spitting image of Sally Hawkins) trying to keep herself composed and businesslike no matter the situation is a personality she pulls off nicely and, much like Sami's restrained & chill demeanor, makes for a great juxtaposition against the mayhem she finds herself in.

This production is clearly a labor of love for both Jackie van Beek and Madeleine Sami given that they also directed and wrote this project in addition to starring in it. Their writing tends to be more flawed than their performances, with some gags missing the mark, including anything related to Jordan ex-girlfriend in a string of jokes that aren't so much painfully unfunny as they are running one joke into the ground too often. A third act related to the two lead characters struggles hitting their most melancholy moment also goes in more predictable directions compared to the more zany traits that previously peppered the script.

On the other hand, the script is also responsible for frequently delivering some killer lines of comedic dialogue, including nearly everything Mel has to say (her explanation of how bisexuality works by referencing the X-Men had me cackling) or a line Jordan, while on a car ride with his Mom and Mel, delivers upon having a revelation about what he has in common with the two other people in the car. I found myself laughing quite a bit throughout the humorous and often eccentrically heartwarming antics in The Breaker Upperers. Plus, the character of Mel is an excellent cinematic depiction of a bisexual human being, one portrayed as a layered person who doesn't just exist to be ogled or as any of the typical bisexual pop culture stereotypes. More characters like her in movies please!